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How do I manage a Zoom classroom?

What if I don’t want to see myself on the screen?You can hide yourself! Your students can still see you.

How will I “see” my students?There are different viewing options. You can choose the gallery view (checkerboard) or the speaker view (speaker enlarged). Find this control in the upper right corner of your Zoom screen.

Can I sort the order in which students appear on the Zoom page?No, participants cannot be sorted.

I have a large class—over 50 students. Will I be able to see all my students simultaneously?No. You will not be able to see all of your students at once as you would in a typical physical classroom. The maximum display is 49 participants per page. You are able to scroll to additional participants.

What are the students seeing on the Zoom page especially if I have a large class?Students control their screen preference settings. These are:

Gallery View: See a “checkerboard view” of classmates on your screen.

Speaker View: See a big view of the speaker and smaller pictures of your classmates either horizontally or vertically across the screen depending on their settings. By default, the speaker view shows whoever is currently speaking and automatically switches when the next person starts speaking.

Can participants change other participants’ settings?No. A participant can only set their own preferences. Only the instructor can change some of the settings of the other participants. Note: To control Zoom at the group level you need to be a host.

What are the differences between a host, and co-host?

Host: This is the teacher. The host has full permissions to manage the Zoom meeting and attendees (the students). The host can do things like stop and start the webinar, mute panelists, stop panelists’ video, remove attendees from the webinar, and more.

Co-hosts: This option is useful for courses with co-teachers, faculty assistants, administrative support. It allows you to share hosting privileges with another user in a meeting. This can be useful to allow another user to manage the administrative side of the meeting, such as muting participants or starting/stopping the recording. Note: you would assign co-hosts during a meeting. Co-hosts cannot start a meeting.

Are we limited to the number of co-hosts?
You should restrict the number of people who are co-hosts for your meetings to people who are either co-teaching or offering forms of administrative support.

How can students ask questions (raise their hands)?Turn on the raise hand feature and instruct students to use the “raise hand” icon on the bottom of the Zoom page when they want to speak.

How do I call on a student? You can call on a student as you would in a classroom. Students will be able to hear and see you OR you can use the “raise hand function.” Consider your class format to determine the best strategy for calling on students. For large lectures it will be easier to use the raise hand feature. For seminars you may be able to manage the classroom just by audibly calling on students and allowing students to unmute themselves.

How will a student answer a question?A student will unmute their audio and then answer as they normally would. Remind students to mute their audio once they have answered the question.

Can I see the order in which students raised their hands if I am using the Raise Hand feature?Yes, students are displayed in your participant list in the order that they raised their hands. Students that raised their hand first are displayed at the top.

What about chatting via messaging during class?Zoom has several options which include turning off the chat completely, chatting directly and only with the host, everyone publicly, everyone publicly and privately. You can manage the chat settings:

While in a meeting, click Chat in the meeting controls.

Click More to display in-meeting chat settings.

You can also download a transcript of the chat:

Save chat: Save all chat messages in a TXT file.

Share file in meeting: Send a file in the chat.

Can I put students in small discussion groups?Yes, you can put students into small groups by using the Breakout Room function which also allows you to choose the small group size. You have two options:

Manually: Choose which students you would like in each room.

Automatically: Zoom automatically splits your students up evenly in each room.

You can also pre-assign students to breakout rooms when you schedule the meeting instead of managing them during the meeting. Once a meeting starts you cannot move students around. Use this option if you have the same small groups meeting over multiple classes.

As the host can I go in and out of the student Breakout Rooms?Yes, you can move in and out of breakout rooms. When you enter a Breakout Room students “see” you.

How do I end my class session?To end a class session, the host needs to click on the button on the right that says “End meeting.” After you select this option you will see the following buttons, “End meeting for all,” “Leave meeting” and “Cancel.” Choose “End meeting for all” to end the meeting completely. If you choose “leave meeting” Zoom usually assigns a random host.